It is past time for the US to come modern with the metric or SI system. I just happened to run across a site discussing the difference between A4 and Letter. It was a really good read and explains why it is a fight every time you try to fight with reformatting in a word processor. Well this is just a soapbox snippet of a note, but I thought the link was informative and I can’t think of one reasonable reason why the US should still be on a system that everyone else has abandoned.

It has been hashed about more than enough, so I won’t rehash. Sony’s recent claim that Anonymous is responsible is pretty funny. I wouldn’t even say I know much about them, but I did read a lot about them during the HBGary event and it seemed pretty clear at face value that Sony was hoping they would be an easy “common enemy” that no one would question when it comes to pointing fingers. Our response: “Oh, Anonymous, well they’re awesome hackers so you had no chance. Beef up security and let’s hope this doesn’t happen again. You are as much a victim as everyone whose accounts were stolen.”

Yeah, right. Sony could at least have tried to keep their systems patched and web server up to date.

Worst case this is an inconvenience if you practice safety online (different passwords for different sites). Credit card companies aren’t going to make you pay anything so long as you report a fraudulent charge as soon as you notice it. The real damage is to the kids who play these things every day and are angry. Good opportunity for a competitor to step in.

I try to refrain from getting too political here, but there is enough technology in this disaster and I feel strongly enough about it that I need to say something.

• Just about every plan that BP has thought up involves recovering the oil. Are they more concerned about tapping the black gold or fixing the environmental disaster?
• The expert’s long term solution requires a relief well to be drilled. Can we let another company start drilling this NOW? Why do we have to wait months and months for this to begin?
• The US Government’s failure was due to them not enforcing or properly inspecting using current laws and standards. Why create new legislation or standards if we are not willing to enforce the ones we already have?
• BP’s executives promised to pay for all the disaster recovery costs yet their liability is legally only $75 million. They have not addressed this obvious question. Do they have insurance? Are they prepared to pay above the $75 million cap, because it’s likely to cost more than 100 times that, and some things will be just impossible to fund enough to clean up.
• What about economic losses years into the future as this mess spreads around Florida hurting their tourism industry and up the east cost disrupting fishing and tourism potentially for years?
• What about economic losses for other countries such as Mexico whose government may not be as tolerant as the US government is by capping their liability?
• What is the long-term danger of these chemicals that they are pumping into the ocean to break up the oil? Where is the openness and who is the oversight on this technology? If the oil is still in the water but we can’t see it, how does that help?
• I work with computer servers and technology all the time for a large business. We have a contingency plan for just about every scenario including failures during a recovery operation. We won’t be causing ecological damage while we recover, but we will be losing money. BP is doing both right now yet no one thought about this possibility and developed a disaster recovery plan for the initial blowout or a contingency plan in case that failed? There are plenty of ways an oil rig like that could have been destroyed, many of which do not involve negligence of any time by the oil company or the government. Where’s the plan for this?
• Why is BP concealing the extent of the spill?
• Why are people still buying BP gasoline in the US today?!?!?

I believe BP is operating this cleanup effort with an eye on profits from the oil rather than the cost of the environmental disaster. This would lead me to believe that BP has no intention of paying the full costs of the cleanup and economic losses as a result because the cleanup will cost more than the value of the oil that has already spilled into the ocean. It would also then follow that if people would vote at the pump by picking other gas stations over BP until they fixed the problem that would speed up the time it would take them to fix the problem. I drove by a local BP station twice today and both times there were cars lined up buying gas even though there are stations nearby who are selling gas at the same, lower, or slightly higher prices. What sane American would purchase gasoline from BP right now? Why would you support a company who views profits above responsibility? I would understand if BP had lower prices and people needed to save a buck, but why do people get off the highway, drive past a cheaper Mobil station, and purchase more expensive BP gasoline? It makes absolutely no sense.

I know my audience is extremely limited, but please if you read this, don’t by gas at BP until they fix this problem. Please spread this message. I heard someone at church today who sounded like they were hearing about this problem for the first time. We need to get this message out or our complacency will allow BP to act in their own interests without consequences. Our votes as their revenue stream at the gas pump will matter more to BP than anything our government is likely to do to them.

The company I work for recently published a policy forbidding blogging while at work. From first glance this looks like a natural and normal thing – why should they provide resources to enable people to blog. Blog from home on your own time and with your own resources. At second glance this is a little scary for the paranoid blogger. Read the rest of this entry »

This month marks two years for my Vista install on my laptop. It is absolutely the best operating system I’ve ever used. Here’s what would have happened to me had I installed a different operating system two years ago:

Windows XP – the next logical choice: My laptop would have been reloaded 3 times since and I would be getting ready to reload again now. Most of my XP installations had to be reloaded every 6 months.

Linux: Month of my life wasted on emerge (if Gentoo). Months of my life wasted on troubleshooting hardware and getting sleep, wireless, etc, just right. Don’t get me wrong, I love Linux, but I’ve never had any success making everything work perfectly on a laptop, and by perfectly I mean that I can keep it running for a month without rebooting it – just putting it in sleep and hibernation when not in use.

I’m looking forward to upgrading to Windows 7 when it comes out. I’ve been running Windows 7 on another test machine at work and so far it seems pretty nice, and faster than Vista on the same hardware.

I’m having something happen to me that has never happened before. I’m getting bored with an install. Nothing is going wrong on my laptop. There’s nothing for me to tweak, nothing to fix, nothing I need to change. It just works exactly how I need it to when I need it to. Maybe it is time to start dual-booting something else.

I just saw an article on Wired called 8 Signs That Apple Customers Are No Longer Special. I am going to breech the Apple vs. PC subject here with my 2 cents. First of all, the article has some good points, but the larger picture is that Apple has fans that spend money on them rather than customers. Customers are a fairly loyal sort of people. You give them a good product at a good price and they will likely return when they need to replace that product. Even more, they will go out and tell their friends who they bought the product from and you can build a base of loyal customers this way. A fan on the other hand is fickle and moves on as soon as something better comes along. Apple’s “customers” are more fan than customer. Read the rest of this entry »

GM has halted work on the factory that is to produce the engine for the Volt. This is absolutely the last thing they should be doing right now. They need to commit 100% to the Volt at the expense of all else. I don’t care if they halt every other production line and sell every car on a lot for half price, they need to downsize and fully invest in the Volt. Their survival depends on it. This to me is just evidence that either GM has no idea what they are doing, or they are trying to manipulate the public into giving them cash so that they can continue working on the Volt. It’s time to take them over and hand off Volt technology to a company who will know how to build it properly and market it effectively.

I’ve written about the Atom processor and what it could do to save power if used in enterprise. Here are some things that I’ve done to save energy at home.

1. Replaced all my lights with CFL (Compact FLourescent) bulbs.
2. Replaced windows with triple pane vinyl.
3. Fixed the draft under the front door with a draft guard like you’ve probably seen on TV.
4. Replaced a 50+ year old boiler (in progress).

Reports on some of these are going to be subjective since I was not thinking at the time that I would be reporting on them, but I thought I would post this as an encouragement to some who may be thinking about undertaking a project like this.

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It wasn’t too long ago that we had this little thing called the dot com bust. What if the government had bailed out the tech firms as they plan to do to the auto industry? Here’s a little glimpse into what our lives would look like. Read the rest of this entry »

I hate to make another post about Entrecard, but enough is happening there that I feel it justified. While browsing around recently I came across an article by impNERD about the problems with Entrecard. He has another post on the subject which describes many of the problems facing the community. In my opinion he is spot on with some of the problems identified, although I do not visit the Entrecard forums frequently enough to understand all the dissent that it sounds like there must be. Some of my suggestions are below.

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